Decisions
by illuminata79
Summary: As the war is coming closer to the island, Mick has to take some difficult decisions and keeps wondering if he has done the right thing this time.


This is my first attempt at filling in the gap left between Evelyn's departure and the final scenes in the movie. I've been wondering for a long time what could actually have driven Mick to join the army in the end, as he appeared not at all keen on getting involved in the war in any way at first. This is what I think might have happened.

One note on the historical accuracy of this story: I have twisted the facts a little to fit my purposes; there were actually no Japanese attacks on the Trobriands except for one episode of accidental bombing. The arrival of the Americans and their development activites are facts, though.

Again, I have picked a title song that deals with another period in history – William Butler Yeats wrote this poem about an Irish airman in World War I – but I simply love the way the Waterboys have set it to music, and there are two reasons why I chose it for a certain U.S. infantryman in World War II: It has this beautifully sad oboe solo that is as haunting as the music in the train station scene in the movie, and there are some lines that I think express perfectly how Mick feels about this war he is getting involved in after all, whether he wants to or not.

**The Waterboys - An Irish Airman Foresees His Death  
(Lyrics: William Butler Yeats**)

_I know that I shall meet my fate  
Somewhere among the clouds above  
Those I fight I do not hate  
Those I guard I do not love_

My country is Kiltartan Cross  
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor  
No likely end could bring them loss  
Or leave them happier than before

* * *

The voices.

I simply could not get rid of the voices.

I could make the recurring images fade when I tried very hard, but the voices remained, repeating themselves over and over in my head.

They sounded just as real as the snoring and sniffling of my sleeping comrades and the creaking of their bunks when one of them turned over.

_„What are you _doing?"

Evelyn's voice, puzzled, taken aback.

_„God be with you, Michael."_

John MacGregor's priestly baritone, superficially calm as usual but with an underlying note of urgency, as if he thought I would surely need some support from above now.

_"Mick?"_

Baffled, questioning, half afraid but still half hopeful she might be wrong, she had begun to realize I obviously wasn't coming.

_"Mick!"_

Her voice sharper now, pleading, starting to panic.

_"Mick! _Mick!"

A desperate, distressed cry that tore at my heart.

I had only cast one last short glance into her direction, to make sure she wouldn't do anything rash like throwing herself over board. Seeing she was safe for now, caught up in MacGregor's arms, who was tall and strong enough to restrain her despite her fierce struggling and screaming, I had rowed away quickly, feeling miserable.

Wondering how she was doing, I rolled over on my other side, wiping sweat from my damp forehead. The lumpy mattress of my bunk seemed unbearably knobby and hard tonight and the flat old pillow hardly existent, reminding me of how we'd slept on the bare ground with just a thin mat to lie on after she and I had fled to the cave, the morning after we had made love in my tiny coastwatcher's hut.

The morning when the Jap boats had drawn nearer to the island than ever before, bringing the war that hadn't been more than a distant threat to me all along, even as I became a spotter for the U.S. Army, too close to keep ignoring it.

I had foolishly hoped I could sit through it all more or less uninvolved on my little island, but how could I have hoped this all-encompassing madness that ravaged the world would pass me by, me and the place I had come to call home?

Evelyn had insisted on staying with me, she had said she didn't mind the inconvenience of our rocky shelter and the imminent danger of the Japanese boats off the island's shore as long as we were together, and I had believed her, for she was no longer the spoiled city girl with the soft white hands blistering quickly after a long session at the typewriter. She had sat through weeks of mourning in the cage she'd made me build, unfazed by weather and hunger and insects; she had come to understand and appreciate the simple, frugal way I was living my life, and she was ready to make a sacrifice to be with me.

But I could not possibly allow her to her sacrifice her precious life – her lovely body, her brilliant mind. This was getting way too dangerous for a woman.

When a Japanese shell hit the rock not far from the entrance of the cave, MacGregor and I finally decided it was time.

My army contact organised the pick-up for 6 AM two days later. At this time of morning, there would be just enough light to navigate safely, but not so much that the boat would be too easy a target for the Nips.

It was all I could do not to lock her into a tight embrace and kiss her goodbye passionately as we packed up our things, not more than we could effortlessly carry.

She must not get wind of my plan to stay behind for a bit longer, otherwise she'd refuse to go.

So I only brushed her cheek fleetingly with my lips before we made our way to the beach, my heart cold and heavy in my chest like a big black clump of stone, growing even heavier when I put her on the boat with John and backed away hastily, feeling like a traitor, like a father abandoning his trusting child.

I had been sure at the time that I was doing the right thing in staying; it was my home after all, it was where I belonged, and I'd certainly not run away from there in times of hardship. I'd do my best to help my island and its people and bring Evelyn back somehow as soon as the fighting was over.

Her voice still echoed in my mind so many months later.

For a long time before I met her, I had always managed to push loss and defeat into a back corner of my mind, hardening my shell, building a wall around myself to let no one and nothing touch me too much.

Evelyn had cracked that shell, broken down my defence, reinstated a bit of my trust in life, leading me to expect good things to come my way after all.

The onset of the war in earnest had therefore caught me with my guard down.

My head understood that I had to let her go if I wanted to stay on. It would have been foolhardy for her to stick around any longer without necessity. Still, it cut me to the bone to see her leave, making me wish I had retained this ability to detach myself from the past and go on, mirthlessly perhaps, but looking ahead, not back.

I had a lot of time to think, alone in this place that might blow up in my face any second for all I knew. Hidden among the rocks, keeping a low profile as I tried to do my spotter's duty, I couldn't stop revisiting those rare precious memories I had of her, again and again reliving the short blissful night we had shared in my hut, or the late evening when I'd asked her to dance, or the day she'd come along for the pearling, the day I had handed her a pearl shell to open as I told her Henk's old legend and she had found a golden ring inside.

It wasn't long after her departure, not even a week, that the Americans landed on the island.

By then, the village and its surroundings had been shelled several times, which was momentarily reassuring me it had been right after all to send Evelyn out of the danger zone as quickly as possible.

The natives, who had mostly retreated into the forest after the first attack on the village, were frightened and apprehensive, newly wary of all strangers, even of me, who had no interest in the war but a great interest in this place and its inhabitants.

But I was the last foreigner staying behind, and although they had known me for so long that we had become friends as far as the differences in culture and language would allow, I sensed that the numerous attacks had sowed distrust among them.

They probably weren't entirely wrong in assuming that these Western occupants, almost all of whom had fled by now, had brought this war to their peaceful homeland in the first place and then run away to safety, leaving them in the lurch.

Very early one quiet morning after the arrival of the Americans, I ventured into the direction of the village, hoping that at this time of day it would be safe to go and pick up some bits and pieces at my house that might be useful in the cave.

I had left as good as everything that wasn't absolutely necessary behind when I took up my coast-watching duty, thinking I could easily walk the mile or so back to my house between shifts, as I hadn't really reckoned with the island taking such heavy shelling.

And, naïvely, I hadn't reckoned that my home, situated about half a mile from the village, would have suffered any damage.

I was quite shaken to see what was left of it when I turned the last bend of the winding jungle path in the mellow light of dawn that day.

Part of the roof had collapsed under the weight of two palm trees that had been felled by a Japanese attack. One half of the structure had remained largely intact, but what had been my bedroom was just a heap of splintered wooden beams and broken furniture.

When I inspected the rubble, I was saddened to find part of my treasured little collection of records lying scattered all over the floor, most of them broken. The rest was gone.

All the pearls I had left behind in their little cardboard boxes had been stolen, too, and so had the gramophone.

The voluminous ledger I'd used for my bookkeeping had been carelessly thrown into the porch along with much of the other loose inventory, most of it ruined, where the tropical humidity and a few torrential rainstorms had rendered my painstaking documentation all but useless.

It was just as well, I thought. The book wouldn't have been much use anyway, other than the sentimental value it had held for me, now that the pearls were gone.

I didn't waste much time wondering who had actually done the looting – the natives or the Japs or maybe even some of my newly arrived compatriots. It didn't really matter, and I forced myself not to dwell on the loss for long.

With a resigned shrug, I went back to the cave with just a small bundle tucked under my arm. At least, I had been able to rescue my scales, some of the weights and a few items of clothing that had been trampled into the dirt but were still usable.

Apart from the most basic staples of survival I kept in the cave anyway, that was all I had now – that and the small tin box containing some photos and my father's fountain pen.

And the Teardrop from the Moon, safe inside my pocket, carefully wrapped in several layers of gold-flecked tissue paper.

Gradually, I was beginning to wonder about my future. Now that the Americans were here physically, I guessed they wouldn't require my services as a coastwatcher for much longer. I knew that they were clearing a large space in the northwest of the island to build an airfield and working to establish a seaplane base on the northern tip. More and more troops were coming in, and I had a hunch I'd become dispensable for them rather sooner than later once they had set up their own better-equipped and better-trained observation posts.

There wasn't much hope of taking up the pearl trade again before this war ended, God knew when. It had become far too dangerous to take a boat out into our usual pearling grounds, and even if I had managed to make it there and back again safely, whom would I have sold my pearls to? As far as I knew, my agent had stopped coming to Port Moresby quite a while ago.

Maybe the Japs would focus more on the north of the island now that the U.S. Army was at work there, which would make it relatively safe to return to the village. Repairing the damage my home had suffered would certainly keep me busy for a while, and maybe, just maybe, all that fighting would be over by then.

The next afternoon, two small Japanese planes began circling overhead.

Nothing new to me, so I ignored them largely and concentrated on the soiled shirts I was trying to wash out in a dented, leaking tin pail by the entrance of the cave.

Until one of the planes suddenly took a dive for the village, dropped off its fatal cargo and speedily soared again, quickly dissolving into a tiny spot in the sky.

The tremendous shockwaves of the exploding bombs shook the cave, and for a horrible moment, I feared it was going to collapse and bury me alive.

However, nothing happened except for a few smaller bits of rock tumbling down.

I lay still for a while until I guessed I could risk leaving the cave and walk over to the village to see if I could do anything to help.

I didn't come as far as the village.

I had been hearing the ominous pop and crackle and rush of the fire and smelling the acrid smoke for quite a while on my way and thought it must be a small grove of palm trees burning.

It was a few palm trees all right but also my house that was on fire.

There was nothing I could do. The flames were way too high and too menacing for me to stand any chance at putting them out or to even come closer.

I didn't feel a lot at the moment. It was just too much.

I simply turned and walked away, went back to my radio and the relative security of the cave, spent the next couple of days blankly staring at the sea or at the cave wall, mechanically answering if the crackling distorted voice came in on the airwaves, which wasn't often, otherwise wondering again and again if I shouldn't rather have left with her.

How long had it been since she and John had gone?

I had lost track of time, I wasn't sure if it had been three weeks or a month or even more.

_Where was she now?_

I hoped they had arrived safely in Australia via Port Moresby, but you never knew these days. There had been several incidents of civil passenger ships being attacked in the open sea.

I forced myself not to think of this awful possibility, tried to convince myself that they would have walked off the gangway in Brisbane or in Sydney long before and were safe and well. Or maybe they had taken the shortest route and headed straight for somewhere on Cape York Peninsula.

I tried to picture her in the city apartment I knew she had inherited from her husband, surrounded by weighty reference books and expensive furniture, or shopping for groceries in a bustling city street, or meeting a girlfriend in a nice little downtown café, all safe and clean and unthreatened by this goddamn war.

I tried to picture her sitting at a desk, reading up on something or writing, perhaps for her book, perhaps a letter for me, a letter I'd probably never get with the mail service to the islands disturbed by the hostilities in the surrounding waters.

I tried to imagine myself catching a passage to Australia once this was over, after I had built us a new house and had resumed my trade, bringing her back to live with me.

I tried to tell myself it couldn't be long now that the Americans were here, that I just needed to hang in there for a little while and all would be well.

Of course I didn't manage to fool myself into actually believing that.

I had a sinking gut feeling that it wouldn't be over too quickly and that I might be stuck here for a long while before I could go and try to find her.

More and more, I came to doubt the wisdom of my decision to stay.

What had I thought I could do? Stop the Japs all by myself, barefoot and in my shirtsleeves, wielding nothing more impressive than a pocket knife and a portable radio?

I laughed bitterly at the idea. It hadn't helped the island and the natives one bit that I had stayed here.

It had been virtually for nothing that I had let her go, no, _made_ her go, sent her off towards an uncertain fate on her own, without explanation, making her think I had abandoned her for some selfish reason, making her feel I had betrayed her hope and her love.

Again, I fretted about whether she had made it home unscathed.

Sitting around with nothing sensible to do was beginning to driving me truly mad.

I needed some purpose, something to do, something to break that vicious circle of self-reproach and guilt and worry.

The U.S. Army was happy to have me.

All it took was a quick word with Captain Delaney, the hard-faced, lean officer overseeing the construction work in the north of the island, and I had soon been off to the U.S. for basic training.

"We'll need all the men we can get, good men like you", Delaney had said grimly. "This war isn't gonna be a quick and easy thing, mark my words."

But not even enlisting succeeded in taking my mind off the woman I had only known for a small fraction of my life, who had been mine for an even shorter time, who had begun to change my life, my perception, my thoughts and feelings.

She was there at the back of my mind all the time, no matter how hard I tried to concentrate, during the drill exercises and calisthenics and rifle trainings, during the unloved tasks each of us got assigned occasionally like kitchen police or latrine duty.

All I could think of in any minute I had to spare was how much I missed her and I wanted to be with her.

To make love to her.

To share all I had with her, even if it was actually next to nothing.

To live with her, to share a home, a life.

To have a future, or at least a tomorrow.

It had all been so close and was moving further out of reach with every day that passed, and that was, at least partly, my own fault.

I had no idea where she was, what she was doing, whether she was safe, or whether she lived at all.

I had no idea if there was the slightest chance that I'd ever see her again. Attempting to find her would be searching for a needle in a haystack, like trying to locate my sisters, with no proper hint where to start from. That there was an apartment in Sydney was all I knew. I'd once had a slip of paper with the address on it, but I had been horrified to find I had lost it at some point. I couldn't remember the name of the street or even which quarter of the city it was in. And of course I couldn't be sure that she had gone there at all.

I had no idea if she would even care to see me, if I did find her, after I had pushed her away like that, without warning, without giving a reason.

I might as well put my life on the line and do my bit for the war effort, defending some place in Europe or Asia that meant nothing to me against an enemy I didn't actually hate, or care much about. I'd probably be easy cannon fodder, with my total lack of experience or even interest in combat.

I still vowed to do my best to stay alive. If I survived this tour of duty, perhaps that meant I was supposed to find her after all. To give her the pearl I still kept with me wherever I went.

* * *

When we were told that my unit was going to ship out to the South Pacific after we had completed our training, I put on an ironic grin, half expecting to hear we were going to some tiny little islands in the Solomon Sea by name of the Trobriands. But it was the Philippines we were headed for one sunny morning in the spring of 1944.

I saw my comrades leaning over the railing, waving to the crowd that had gathered to see us off, a shipload of mostly very young men, or rather _boys._ The vast majority of them weren't much older than twenty, if anything.

Many of them were a little pale this morning - I knew they had been out at a USO dance until late last night - but even those who appeared really green around the gills from a mixture of a bad hangover and the unfamiliar rolling of the deck under their feet tried to keep a brave face and to cut a dashing figure for their mothers and sweethearts who stood on the pier, waving, some of them dabbing at their eyes, some cheering, some yelling giddy declarations of love, some hoisting up small children to let them catch a last glimpse of their dads or brothers or uncles.

I felt very old watching those young bright-eyed folks. To them, the war seemed to be nothing more than a big new adventure. Their lives had not yet been touched by its grim reality.

I didn't share their excitement, not at all. They reminded me of Gerry, who had joined up quite soon after Pearl Harbor, hoping to pick up lots of pretty girls when he paraded about in a fancy uniform. I had never shared his light-hearted view of the war, and I hoped his hadn't cost him his life.

I for my part still wasn't convinced that losing life or limb guarding some meaningless bit of land in the midst of the ocean would do much to change the outcome of the war or to bring its end about one single day earlier, but here I was anyway, not quite sure why exactly.

"_Fishy!"_

An exuberant voice yelling into my ear and a hand slapping me forcefully on the back made me turn around.

"Danny Boy! They let you on board after all!" I exclaimed, only half joking, when I found myself looking into a familiar face grinning broadly at me.

"Yup! I made it! Like I said I would."

I had met Danny O'Riordan on my first day at the barracks, a nice, fun-loving Irish lad from Philadelphia with a wicked grin and black hair that was forever sticking up in impossible places. He was an excellent runner who never seemed to get out of breath, and he had a lot of brains to go with his athletic body. He'd have been the stuff great soldiers are made of if it hadn't been for one problem: his left eye, which was as good as blind after some childhood accident. I still didn't know how exactly he managed to pass his enlistment examination – he claimed he had simply memorized the eye chart, but could an army doctor really be fooled so easily?

On the other hand, he'd made it through all of the training, apparently without anyone noticing something was wrong. He had, however, confided in me once after a few beers we'd shared one night in spring on a weekend pass, imploring me almost on his knees not to rat him out when he had sobered up.

I did him the favour. I knew he had a difficult history with his father, who had kept calling him lazy and worthless and whatnot, and was very eager to prove to him that he could get into the army and do his bit despite this handicap he had. I didn't think it was a particularly good idea to go to war with one useless eye, but it was his own life, his own decision if he was so keen on going to the jungle to get his ass shot off by some Jap approaching him from the wrong side.

"Hey, Joe, look what I've found. Didn't I tell you we'd find the Carp on deck?" Danny shouted and grinned broadly as tall, lanky Joe Kowalski, a farm boy from Arkansas and Danny's best buddy, hurried to join us.

"I'm pretty glad we're finally shipping out", Joe said, eyes shining with anticipation. "Kick some Japanese ass, finally. No more stupid marches up and down that goddamn hill and shooting at dummies and getting chewed out by Baldo 'cause your shoes ain't shined right or your hair's parted the wrong way. Or 'cause someone pinched the can of peaches that he's swiped from the officers' mess himself." He whipped out a pack of cigarettes – good ones, not the evil-tasting cheap fags most of the privates smoked – and held it out invitingly.

I helped myself to one and let him light it expertly.

Danny shook his head when Joe thrust the pack at him. He never smoked unless he was very drunk. "Can't say I'm gonna miss Baldo much", he said with a lopsided grin. "Oh well, on the other hand, at least _he _knew how to shoot, and boy, he was fit! Not like Thirkell. Ever seen _him_ running?"

"Nah", Joe replied. "Old Fatso broke into a sweat if he only thought of running."

"Exactly", Danny sneered.

"Mind you, he did run, once", Joe grinned. "Don't you remember when Monahan put the snake into his tent?"

Both of them screeched with laughter at the memory, and even I chuckled a bit when I recalled the thickset figure of our most hated staff sergeant bursting from his tent in a panic.

"Served the fucking goldbricker just right", Joe said with a good deal of satisfaction in his voice. "Just like when …"

I left the two of them to their reminiscing about the numerous pranks they and their pals had played on some unpopular comrades or noncoms and went to find a little space to be on my own for a while.

The utter lack of privacy was what galled me the most in my new life with the U.S. Army. Never being alone had been what I'd hated most about the training, a lot more than arbitrary officers or merciless drill, and I didn't expect things to improve now that hundreds of men were crowded into this ship.

I was indeed lucky enough now to find a little unoccupied nook to the side of the large superstructure of the vessel.

Leaning against the white-painted wall, I finished my cigarette undisturbed while I kept my eyes trained on the horizon, wondering what would be waiting for us there.

Part of me still couldn't grasp that I had joined the army, that I was really going to see action now.

Oh yes, I knew I looked the part just fine in my brand new uniform and the garrison cap I wore at an angle, my unruly hair freshly trimmed and neatly parted as befits a soldier. Some of the ladies on the pier had thrown admiring glances and pretty smiles my way this morning, and I had caught myself thinking a little ironically that Gerry might have been right about uniforms and girls.

I didn't feel ready to go to war, I certainly didn't, but I had made my choice, and it was too late now to opt out.

As Grandpa used to say, I had made my bed and would have to lie in it, no matter what.

There it was again, one of these indelible voices in my head.

Not Evelyn's this time but John MacGregor's.

_"God be with you, Michael."_


End file.
